Andreas Saugstad wrote this article.
Two of the most prolific and famous philosophers in the twentieth century were Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Russell was Wittgenstein’s teacher in Cambridge around 1911. Russell was the leading philosopher in England at that time, and one of the world’s leading thinkers in philosophy of mathematics and logic.
Saul Kripke is a good Omaha boy who made fine use of his gifts for the world beyond the midlands.
You can read an excellent article titled Saul Kripke, Genius Logician that Andreas Saugstad, one of my star Go Inside Magazine writers, created after meeting the great Kripke in person in Oslo in 2001. Kripke may be prickly, but that’s the price we pay to touch the effervescence of things we do not comprehend.
Here is Kripke’s website at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
You must read Kripke’s classic monograph Naming and Necessity published by Harvard University Press because the experience will stun you as it betters you.
by Andreas Saugstad
Cornel West has been called the “pre-eminent African-American intellectual of his generation.” In this essay I bring you a review of The Cornel West Reader, and his new CD, Sketches of My Culture, and I also try to give you an introduction to this philosopher’s world of ideas and struggle for social justice.
by Andreas Saugstad
The world is not always as we think it is. I do believe that human beings can have a true and veridical access to external reality, but many of our opinions are shaped by our culture and social context.
by Andreas Saugstad
The economic system dominating the world today is capitalism. When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev started his Perestroika in the 1980ies, something joyful happened: the world was released from oppressive communism and an oppressive use of ideology. At the same time, however, a side-effect of this seems to have been a renewed focus on capitalism as an economic and social order, and the Americanization of the world could continue at greater pace than ever. Capitalism is now not just an American phenomenon: we find it more or less in Europe, Russia, China and South America. How does capitalism affect us? What is its impact on ethics and morality? What is the relation of capitalism to moral psychology?
by Andreas Saugstad
Saul Kripke is one of the greatest thinkers in modern philosophy. He is one of the few academics today who can be characterized as a living legend. For many years, he has been professor of philosophy at Princeton University in the USA. When he visited Oslo to give a lecture at my university, I met him at a local restaurant to do an interview. The image below of Kripke and me on the streets of Oslo was taken by Helge Skirbekk.
by Andreas Saugstad
The period in which we now live is often called “postmodernism”. According to Nancy Murphy, author of Anglo-American Postmodernity, postmodernism in the Anglo-American world started some time around 1950. Others would perhaps say that postmodernism is something which evolved after 1968. But anyway, in 1979 Jean-Francois Lyotard published a book called The Postmodern Condition. At this point someone had defined postmodernism, and during the last 20 years the ideas of postmodernism have been much debated in the Western world.
by Andreas Saugstad
When I started my academic journey I was a pretty self-centered young man. Not that I did much evil, I started to study because I loved academics and wanted to pursue philosophy – the search for truth and wisdom. I come from an academic background, and have for many years enjoyed the university world. When I, after three semesters, entered the philosophical community in Oslo, I was thrilled. We had many discussions, we read some of the greatest texts in the history of thinking, and I was captured by questions relating to the nature of knowledge, language and metaphysics.
by Andreas Saugstad
The media are dominating our culture. We live in the information age, not only because of the internet, but because of TV channels, radio-channels, newspapers, magazines and books. As the CNN ad says: “you are what you know” – information is essential to our times. In my country of Norway, Reality TV is now dominating, shows with random people placed in a bar together, or some Norwegians placed in a house in Greece, or some other setting where very normal people (nothing bad in being normal) are filmed in every thinkable (and unthinkable) situation.
by Andreas Saugstad
A new religious kind of thinking has received respect and recognition. The analytical philosophers of religion have done much innovative and creative work, and may challenge many in the academic world today.
by Andreas Saugstad
The word “hedonism” comes from the Greek word “hedone,” which means pleasure. In antiquity, a group of philosophers were called hedonists, because they believed that the highest principle of morality is pleasure and that the meaning of life is to reach a state of pleasure or happiness. Some people believe that the highest goal in life is to follow rules, and some believe it is to demonstrate one’s superiority over others (elitism, fascism). Some ancient philosophers – the stoics – believed that the guiding principle of life should be connected to controlling one’s passions and any kind of circumstances.
by Andreas Saugstad
How can philosophy make your life better? And what relevance does philosophy have to life? My view is that by engaging in the questions and situations we are confronted with in ordinary life, philosophy may give us a higher quality of life. Philosophy is relevant to life in the sense that it discusses the basic questions of human existence, and because philosophy is a creative activity carried out by individuals constructing meaning, philosophy is constitutive, i.e. it gives us meaning to life and gives reality a new dimension.
by Andreas Saugstad
Some believe Britney Spears is one of the greatest teen heroes in the world today. She is famous for her records “…Baby one more time” (1999) and “Oops…I Did It Again” (2000). Britney is only a teenager, but is already, rich, famous, and no doubt she is very beautiful.
by Andreas Saugstad
The young Wittgenstein wrote that the mystical is not how the world is, but THAT it is. The philosopher was pondering the mystical feeling that there is something existing. He was trying to grasp the Stimmung associated with the old question “why is there something rather than nothing?”
